Socialist Model: Still an Alive Alternative

As a student who is looking to major in political science with minors in sociology and economics, I know that we are living in a capitalistic society where, over the years, apparent advantages of it have been ingrained into our system. We have been taught that if you are shrewd, sharp, and know how to be an opportunist then you will succeed and it doesn’t matter whether or not you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth since only the aforementioned qualities matter.

Currently, we all are under a pandemic and we all are fighting a very tiny microbe which is invisible. Statistics tell us that even the most developed capitalistic societies like Italy and America are failing at combating it and coping with it and I believe that it is due to the following reasons:

Certain governments are not going into a complete lock down in order to please capitalists and industrialists so that their factories and markets continue to make money and satisfy the bourgeoisie even if it is at the cost of millions of innocent lives. They continue to keep running entire cities and risking the spread of this deadly virus just because at the highest level some pockets are getting lighter.

The health care sector is owned by individuals who have not even equipped doctors with the basic things which are required in these times to ensure that they are safe. They are simply not interested in making any investments towards the future like increasing the number of ventilators even though most of the affected patients of Covid 19 are dying because of a lack of ventilators. Even those patients who do not have corona but require ventilators are dying due to their unavailability.

Another issue which stems from the capitalist nature of our government system is that they are busy allocating a majority of the expenditure on defense budgets which includes research on biological warfare which is one of the many conspiracies which explain this pandemic since even Covid 19 could be the outcome of a similar experiment in a biological lab.

The people who are living their lives below the poverty line and are constantly stressed due to fear of hunger barely have the immunity which is required to fight with such germs. As it is, almost 9 million people die, each year, due to hunger. This number will surely be increased this year due to a spike in unemployment.

Doctors and paramedic staff are also dying because they don’t have PPE; the same goes for people who don’t even have access to masks. The N95 mask which was previously available for $1 is now being sold for $6 and while it is okay to try to make a profit off of luxury goods, it is entirely immoral to make a profit out of essential, life saving products.

Let’s now recreate this scenario in a hypothetical socialist system. If we were within a socialist system then no government would try to avoid a lockdown simply because the government wouldn’t work in self interest but out of concern for its citizens. Similarly, the health care industry wouldn’t operate out of profit motive either but out of the necessity of its citizens. It would efficiently carry out its purpose which is to save the lives of those who are suffering. Thirdly, no one will have to live in fear of hunger as there won’t be people living under the poverty line. The state will provide for everyone as long as everyone serves the state which in turn will work for the benefit of the people.

It is high time we acknowledge that the current system which is in place is not working efficiently for all the classes. It only serves the interests of those who are at the top or the 1% while the remaining 99% continues to struggle. We must first fight this virus and then collectively fight this parasitical system